Oracle Blog

What's happening with viz

Tuesday Jan 20, 2009

Sun Shared Visualization software gives users the ability to run 3D OpenGL applications on servers with graphics and take advantage of hardware acceleration. To date, one of the biggest limitations is that, while we could let multiple users "share" the resources on a Linux or Solaris server taking advantage of as many cores and GPUs we could put on a system, on Windows, we were stuck with getting acceleration for only one user - the "owner" of the desktop.

Enter the marriage of VirtualGL and VirtualBox. With VirtualBox, of course, one can run several VMs on a system. With the latest VirtualBox, 3D hardware acceleration is enabled. So what if you start a VirtualBox Windows VM remotely on a Linux or Solaris server using VirtualGL from the Shared Visualization software? You get remote access to a Windows desktop that has hardware acceleration for any OpenGL application that you run.

This is what you do:
1. Download the Shared Visualization 1.1.1 software from the Sun Download Center.
2. Install both the VirtualGL and TurboVNC components.
3. Get the latest VirtualBOx
4. Suppose you have a Linux or Solaris x64 server with one or more nVIDIA GPUs. Suppose its name is "3Dserver"
/opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglconnect 3Dserver
5. Launch a TurboVNC server on 3Dserver
/opt/TurboVNC/bin/vncserver
6. Create a Windows VirtualBox VM, remembering to enable 3D hardware acceleration in the General preferences.
Save this as a .vdi file.
7. From ANY remote client, start a TurboVNC viewer connected to the TurboVNC viewer
/opt/TurboVNC/bin vncviewer 3Dserver:N
8. Start the Windows VirtualBox VM using VirtualGL
/opt/VirtualGL/bin/vglrun VirtualBox -startvm {your VM's name or ID}

Et voila! you have a remote Windows desktop with hw acceleration for 3D applications, and you can have more than one!